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Today was a museum day. We visited the Correr Museum, the National Archaeological Museum and the Monumental Rooms Biblioteca Marciana. These museums are in the building that is on three sides of San Marco Square. On the way there I stop for another picture of the Bridge of Sighs.The Correr Museum is in a sumptuous building that once was the residence of the sovereign when Venice was under Austrian rule. Its many rooms are ornately decorated.I love the cabinets of this time. Just imagine all the treasures that were tucked into these many drawers and compartments.This library room has floor to ceiling shelves of old and rare books. This one with vellum pages is open for display..One of the many rooms filled with sculptures.

Have you ever seen toes this big?This room was once a library, with an amazing ceiling, but today it holds an exhibition of very expensive jewelry and jewelled objects. I only discover tonight that there is in fact a library we could have visited that sounds wonderful only it wasn’t open today, and isn’t open tomorrow. Some of tourist information here is a bit difficult to find. I am quite disappointed that we won’t be able to visit this library of ancient books and manuscripts.I walked in support of an exhibit about a young woman named Ashra who walked 11,146,312 meters to reach Italy from Sub-Saharan Africa, like many before her and many after her. Visitors to the gallery walk and their steps are recorded to reach the same number of meters.

There are many rooms of medieval paintings. I particularly liked this one.This exhibit had the stories of each of the people photographed written in Farsi over their hands and faces. Bob was trying to figure out how to get to the second story of books in this library room.I took this photo from the second floor window at the opposite end of San Marco Square. There are more people today than we have seen on the other days we were here…and lots of people were feeding the pigeons even though there are signs saying not to.These big cruise ships are part of the reason that Venice is so polluted. One ship creates as much pollution in a day as one million cars!The sun tried to peek out but couldn’t quite manage it. Oh well, at least it wasn’t raining.We sat beside the Doge’s Palace to eat our lunch and watch the people walking by. It is one of the few places where there is a place to sit. I think that Venice has so many visitors that the city doesn’t want people to sit for a while unless you are in a restaurant.

There were so many more tourists in Venice today…and we had to laugh at this group of women who had tied their scarves together and were all holding on, just like little kids in daycare.We wanted to see Venice by night so we stayed out late. We took a vaporetto ride down the main canal to San Marco Square that took much longer than we expected. The boat went very slowly, perhaps because none of the boats on the canals have navigational lights! They only have very small lights, usually a white one on the front and a red one on the side. It is almost impossible to see the boats and I have no idea how they manage to navigate in the dark!The gondolas often didn’t have any lights at all! It seemed rather dangerous to me.The Rialto Bridge at night is quite beautiful. Notice no lights on the boats.We finally arrived at San Marco Square, expecting all sorts of activity and there is almost no one there! We were pretty disappointed. I took a picture of the Basilica and we took another very slow boat ride back to the bus and then home. It was a long day today, we were out and about for twelve hours!.

We were going to take the metro into Bilbao but it was impossible to find a parking spot anywhere nearby so we ended up driving into the City. Once again I am very thankful for our trusty iPad and its navigational abilities. We finally find a parking garage there and walk to the Guggenheim along the river. We pass this big mural under a bridge.

Soon we see the museum, which is a very impressive building, covered in thin sheets of titanium. I quite like this big spider sculpture. Another view near the entrance.

The Guggenheim Bilbao was not what we expected, and judging by the looks on the other visitors’ faces, not what they expected either. I did like the Richard Serra installation called The Matter of Time. Here is a picture of a picture and then a not very good photo of Bob walking through one of the sculptures to give an idea of its immense size.

An interactive art work. Can you spot me?

There were only two other exhibits, one of an artist named Jean-Michel Besquiat and a couple of video installations that were very strange. Besquiat’s work was a bit like street art, quite dark and hard to appreciate. Look him up if you are interested. There were no photos allowed. I decided that the building itself is really a piece of artwork and needs to be appreciated that way. It is not a functional building for displaying art, or even for navigating through.

We have tea and some tapas in the café and we decide we have seen enough of the Guggenheim.

One of Bilbao residents favourite pieces of art is Puppy by Jeff Koon. It is a 13 m (43′) high sculpture of a Highland Terrier with a coat of flowers. It made both of us smile.

And…I don’t think Inhave mentioned how much people in Spain love dogs. There are dogs eveywhere, and often they are very large dogs. These two ladies had seven dogs between them, some of them were off leash.

We had our picnic lunch on the benches here and then go to the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, which was wonderful. It was very well organized chronologically and the paintings were also labeled in English, which we really appreciated. There are so many fantastic Spanish painters I have never even heard of. We particularly liked the 13th to 15th Century paintings which were larger, more colourful and full of expression than paintings we have seen from this time in other museums. I took a quick snap of this Mary Cassatt work, which is one of my favourites. I was so surprised to walk into a room and find this painting.

On our walk back to our car I took this photo to show the mix of very modern sculpture in the foreground, very old buildings, and then the extremely modern tower in the background. Everywhere in Spanish cities and towns we see this interesting mix of styles.